I have quite a "few" macs that are plagued with the Nivida and ATI graphics that are well known to fail as you will read

So I have a 2011 iMac 2011 27in with the I7 2600 and 1Gb HD 6970 ticking time bomb. I got this from work since the drive has 90 failed sectors but I been using it daily and its works fine (thats a whole other issue I'm going to have to deal with later on). I have had many MacBook Pros with the 8600m GT quit on me ( 2 CTO 15in and 1 CTO 17in died on me both with less then a year of usage on them, only 2 others I have survived this plague). I have 2 early 2011 MacBook Pros one base 2.0Ghz i7 15in, and one CTO 17in. I recently got the 2011 CTO 17in back to life when, originally it was thrown out due to water damage 3 years ago (works great now!!!!). The 2011 15in had graphics issues within the first year we had it (in 2011) when apple denied our warranty claim we left it to rot with our other macs until I decided to boot it and its magically working as if nothing happened. Haven't used it to much since it needs a new battery the original exploded while in storage and cracked the trackpad.

What this post is about is I just wanted to ask other owner of these years Mac products and have them post about issues with their 2011s since I'm quite worried about my iMac quitting on me soon since its getting older now. I use it for the web and Netflix and thats about it . I play some Steam games on it (rarely) but when I do I max all the fans to try and keep everything cool.

If you have (or had) a 2011 MacBook or iMac with ATI dedicated graphics problems was there really any warning signs to the GPU failing other then the screen going purple or random bars showing up and the images on screen distorting? Have you done anything to try and extend the life of your 2011 Mac with ATI graphics?

Ideally the best thing to do with iMacs, MacBooks, etc. - basically anything that needs air to flow through a cramped circuitous route - is to periodically, every year or so, open it up, take it apart, and blow all the dust out of the works. If you wait for problems to appear you've waited too long, damage has already been done.

Only by keeping it relatively dust-free can you insure that the damage never gets done in the first place, or at least is so long delayed that it's reasonable to expect you to replace it. Not the 1-2 years that Apple expects, but it should last 5, maybe 10 years with regular cleaning.

There is absolutely no way to adequately clean iMacs without disassembly. I could post a picture of a slightly older iMac (the first year they were glued together so it's very similar to modern units) that would run with the fan at full blast 24/7 and was "slow." After disassembly and dusting, the system works the same as it was when it was new (better, in fact, since I maxed the RAM and replaced the HD with an SSD, but that's another story). The dust covered everything from the fans to the components - and this was after trying to clean it without disassembly. Air takes too many twists and turns inside the case to be able to reach that path from the outside.

The good thing about 2012 MBPs and older MacBooks is they're pretty easy to take apart, eight to ten screws holding on the bottom plate, then you just need to remove 3-4 screws holding the fan on and voila, you have access to the only heatsink in the thing. Dust normally congeals up against the fan-side of the heatsink, by removing it you can just peel it off and then it's easy to blow any bits and pieces out.

I use macs fan control on all of them and blast the fans whenever CPU or GPU temps hit about 70-80c. The 2011 17in Looked like it was repasted at some point since I found traces of thermal paste on the logic board when I took it apart inspecting the corrosion (which there is quite a bit). I would like to repaste the iMac when the HDD dies and swap it out since its open might as well do all of that to help it out. The 2011 15in was full of dust from it sitting for years when I took the badly swollen battery out of the warped case (its fine now) I blew it out, prob should repaste it as well when I have the chance as well it runs a little on the hotter side.

Thats a good idea about the micro fiber on the intake vent on the iMac I'll give that a shot for sure. That reminds me of the sockish thing people put on the front of their mac pros to keep dust out.

I just love my macs so much it makes me sad when they die

Last edited by Papaginos on Wed Mar 01, 2017 8:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I had a 2011 27" iMac several years ago. It was plagued with the Radeon 6970 issues, and required a motherboard/GPU upgrade since out of the blue one day would not boot up. Fortunately it was covered under Applecare so it cost me nothing but waiting around for a few weeks for the Apple Store to fix it (no data lost on HD, thankfully). Within the next few weeks it was sold on eBay, and replaced with a 2008 dual quad-core Mac Pro (which I have been using ever since as my regular computer, upgraded to dual quad-core 3.2GHz CPUs).

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